Analytics

Observations of Methane Emissions from Coal Mines

Temporal Averaging Multiple Observations

Measurement noise can make it difficult to detect methane point sources from a single observation, but temporal averaging of multiple observations reduces the noise. We find that aggregating data from ten to twenty GHGSat-D overpasses reveals strong time-averaged plume signals from three coal mines. Once these plumes are detected, we use two methods to estimate the corresponding source rates: one based on the observed integrated mass enhancement (IME) and another based on the average cross-sectional flux.